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Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom

Saul Newman
University of Western Australia
snewman@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

2003 Saul Newman.
All rights reserved.

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1. Max Stirner and Michel Foucault are two thinkers not often
examined together. However, it has been suggested that the
long-ignored Stirner may be seen as a precursor to contemporary
poststructuralist thought.[1 <#foot1>] Indeed, there are many
extraordinary parallels between Stirner's critique of
Enlightenment humanism, universal rationality, and essential
identities, and similar critiques developed by thinkers such as
Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and others. However,
the purpose of this paper is not merely to situate Stirner in
the
"poststructuralist" tradition, but rather to examine his
thinking
on the question of freedom, and to explore the connections here
with Foucault's own development of the concept in the context of
power relations and subjectivity. Broadly speaking, both
thinkers
see the classical Kantian idea of freedom as deeply problematic,
as it involves essentialist and universal presuppositions which
are themselves often oppressive. Rather, the concept of freedom
must be rethought. It can no longer be seen in solely negative
terms, as freedom from constraint, but must involve more
positive
notions of individual autonomy, particularly the freedom of the
individual to construct new modes of subjectivity. Stirner, as
we
shall see, dispenses with the classical notion of freedom
altogether and develops a theory of ownness [Eigneheit] to
describe this radical individual autonomy. I suggest in this
paper
that such a theory of ownness as a non-essentialist form of
freedom has many similarities with Foucault's own project of
freedom, which involves a critical ethos and an aestheticization
of the self. Indeed, Foucault questions the anthropological and
universal rational foundations of the discourse of freedom,
redefining it in terms of ethical practices.[2 <#foot2>] Both
Stirner and Foucault are therefore crucial to the understanding
of
freedom in a contemporary sense--they show that freedom can no
longer be limited by rational absolutes and universal moral
categories. They take the understanding of freedom beyond the
confines of the Kantian project--grounding it instead in
concrete
and contingent strategies of the self.


Kant and Universal Freedom

2. In order to understand how this radical reformulation of freedom
can take place, we must first see how the concept of freedom is
located in Enlightenment thought. In this paradigm, the exercise
of freedom is seen as an inherently rational property. According
to Immanuel Kant, for instance, human freedom is presupposed by
moral law that is rationally understood. In the Critique of
Practical Reason, Kant seeks to establish an absolute rational
ground for moral thinking beyond empirical principles. He argues
that empirical principles are not an appropriate basis for moral
laws because they do not allow their true universality to be
established. Rather, morality should be based on a universal
law--a categorical imperative--which can be rationally
understood.
For Kant, then, there is only one categorical imperative, which
provides a foundation for all rational human action: "Act only
on
that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it
should
become a universal law" (38). In other words, the morality of an
action is determined by whether or not it should become a
universal law, applicable to all situations. Kant outlines three
features of all moral maxims. Firstly, they must have the form
of
universality. Secondly, they must have a rational end. Thirdly,
the maxims that arise from the autonomous legislation of the
individual should be in accordance with a certain teleology of
ends.

3. This last point has important consequences for the question of
human freedom. For Kant, moral law is based on freedom--the
rational individual freely chooses out of a sense of duty to
adhere to universal moral maxims. Thus, for moral laws to be
rationally grounded they cannot be based on any form of coercion
or constraint. They must be freely adhered to as a rational act
of
the individual. Freedom is seen by Kant as an autonomy of the
will--the freedom of the rational individual to follow the
dictates of his own reason by adhering to these universal moral
laws. This autonomy of the will, then, is for Kant the supreme
principle of morality. He defines it as "that property of it by
which it is a law to itself (independently of any property of
objects of volition)" (59). Freedom is, therefore, the ability
of
the individual to legislate for him or herself, free from
external
forces. However, this freedom of self-legislation must be in
accordance with universal moral categories. Hence, for Kant, the
principle of autonomy is: "Never choose except in such a way
that
the maxims of the choice are comprehended in the same volition
as
a universal law" (59). It would appear that there is a central
paradox in this idea of freedom--you are free to choose as long
as
you make the right choice, as long as you choose universal moral
maxims. However, for Kant there is no contradiction here
because,
although adherence to moral laws is a duty and an absolute
imperative, it is still a duty that is freely chosen by the
individual. Moral laws are rationally established, and because
freedom can only be exercised by rational individuals, they will
necessarily, yet freely, choose to obey these moral laws. In
other
words, an action is free only insofar as it conforms to moral
and
rational imperatives--otherwise it is pathological and therefore
"unfree." In this way, freedom and the categorical imperative
are
not antagonistic but, rather, mutually dependent concepts.
Individual autonomy, for Kant, is the very basis of moral laws.

But that the principle of autonomy [...] is the sole
principle
of morals can be readily shown by mere analysis of concepts
of
morality; for by this analysis we find that its principle
must
be a categorical imperative, and that [the imperative]
commands neither more nor less than this very autonomy. (59)


The Authoritarian Obverse

4. Nevertheless, it would seem that there is a hidden
authoritarianism in Kant's formulation of freedom. While the
individual is free to act in accordance with the dictates of his
own reason, he must nevertheless obey universal moral maxims.
Kant's moral philosophy is a philosophy of the law. That is why
Jacques Lacan was able to diagnose a hidden jouissance--or
enjoyment in excess of the law--that attached itself to Kant's
categorical imperative. According to Lacan, Sade is the
necessary
counterpart to Kant--the perverse pleasure that attaches itself
to
the law becomes, in the Sadeian universe, the law of pleasure.[3
<#foot3>] The thing that binds Kantian freedom to the law is its
attachment to an absolute rationality. It is precisely because
freedom must be exercised rationally that the individual finds
him
or herself dutifully obeying rationally founded universal moral
laws.

5. However, both Foucault and Stirner have called into question
such
universal rational and moral categories, which are central to
Enlightenment thought. They contend that absolute categories of
morality and rationality sanction various forms of domination
and
exclusion and deny individual difference. For Foucault, for
instance, the centrality of reason in our society is based on
the
radical and violent exclusion of madness. People are still
excluded, incarcerated, and oppressed because of this arbitrary
division between reason and unreason, rationality and
irrationality. Similarly, the prison system is based on a
division
between good and evil, innocence and guilt. The incarceration of
the prisoner is made possible only through the universalization
of
moral codes. What must be challenged, for Foucault, are not only
the practices of domination that are found in the prison, but
also
the morality which justifies and rationalizes these practices.
The
main focus of Foucault's critique of the prison is not
necessarily
on the domination within, but on the fact that this domination
is
justified on absolute moral grounds--the moral grounds that Kant
seeks to make universal. Foucault wants to disrupt the "serene
domination of Good over Evil" central to moral discourses and
practices of power ("Intellectuals" 204-17).

6. It is this moral absolutism that Stirner is also opposed to. He
sees morality as a "spook"--an abstract ideal that has been
placed
beyond the individual and held over him in an oppressive and
alienating way. Morality and rationality have become "fixed
ideas"--ideas that have come to be seen as sacred and absolute.
A
fixed idea, according to Stirner, is an abstract concept that
governs thought--a discursively closed fiction that denies
difference and plurality. They are ideas that have been
abstracted
from the world and continue to dominate the individual by
comparing him or her to an ideal norm that is impossible to
attain. In other words, Kant's project of taking moral maxims
out
of the empirical world and into a transcendental realm where
they
would apply universally, would be seen by Stirner as a project
of
alienation and domination. Kant's invocation of absolute
obedience
to universal moral maxims Stirner would see as the worst
possible
denial of individuality. For Stirner, the individual is
paramount,
and anything which purports to apply to or speak for everyone
universally is an effacement of individual uniqueness and
difference. The individual is plagued by these abstract ideals,
these apparitions that are not of his own creation and are
imposed
on him, confronting him with impossible moral and rational
standards. As we shall see, moreover, the individual for Stirner
is not a stable, fixed identity or essence--this would be just
as
much an idealist abstraction as the specters that oppress it.
Rather, individuality may be seen here in terms similar to
Foucault's--as a radically contingent form of subjectivity, an
open strategy that one engages in to question and contest the
confines of essentialism.


The Critique of Essentialism

7. The exorcism that Stirner performs on this "spirit realm" of
moral
and rational absolutes is part of a radical critique of
Enlightenment humanism and idealism. His "epistemological break"
with humanism may be seen most clearly in his repudiation of
Ludwig Feuerbach. In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach
applied the notion of alienation to religion. Religion is
alienating, according to Feuerbach, because it requires that man
abdicate his essential qualities and powers by projecting them
onto an abstract God beyond the grasp of humanity. For
Feuerbach,
the predicates of God were really only the predicates of man as
a
species being. God was an illusion, a fictitious projection of
the
essential qualities of man. In other words, God was a
reification
of human essence. Like Kant, who tried to transcend the
dogmatism
of metaphysics by reconstructing it on rational and scientific
grounds, Feuerbach wanted to overcome religious alienation by
re-establishing the universal rational and moral capacities of
man
as the fundamental ground for human experience. Feuerbach
embodies
the Enlightenment humanist project of restoring man to his
rightful place at the center of the universe, of making the
human
the divine, the finite the infinite.

8. Stirner argues, however, that by seeking the sacred in "human
essence," by positing an essential and universal subject and
attributing to him certain qualities that had hitherto been
attributed to God, Feuerbach has merely reintroduced religious
alienation, placing the abstract concept of man within the
category of the Divine. Through the Feuerbachian inversion man
becomes like God, and just as man was debased under God, so the
individual is debased beneath this perfect being, man. For
Stirner, man is just as oppressive, if not more so, than God.
Man
becomes the substitute for the Christian illusion. Feuerbach,
Stirner argues, is the high priest of a new universal
religion--humanism: "The human religion is only the last
metamorphosis of the Christian religion" (158). It is important
to
note here that Stirner's concept of alienation is fundamentally
different from the Feuerbachian humanist understanding as
alienation from one's essence. Stirner radicalizes the theory of
alienation by seeing this essence as itself alienating. As I
shall
suggest, alienation in this instance may be seen more along the
lines of a Foucauldian notion of domination--as a discourse that
ties the individual to a certain subjectivity through the
conviction that there lies within everyone an essence to be
revealed.

9. According to Stirner, it is this notion of a universal human
essence that provides the foundations for the absolutization of
moral and rational ideas. These maxims have become sacred and
immutable because they are now based on the notion of humanity,
on
man's essence, and to transgress them would be a transgression
of
this very essence. In this way the subject is brought into
conflict with itself. Man is, in a sense, haunted and alienated
by
himself, by the specter of "essence" inside him: "Henceforth man
no longer, in typical cases, shudders at ghosts outside him, but
at himself; he is terrified at himself" (Stirner 41). So for
Stirner, Feuerbach's "insurrection" has not overthrown the
category of religious authority--it has merely installed man
within it, reversing the order of subject and predicate. In the
same way, we might suggest that Kant's metaphysical
"insurrection"
has not overthrown dogmatic structures of belief, but only
installed morality and rationality within them.

10. While Kant wanted to take morality out of the domain of
religion,
founding it instead on reason, Stirner maintains that morality
is
only the old religious dogmatism in a new, rational guise:
"Moral
faith is as fanatical as religious faith!" (45). What Stirner
objects to is not morality itself, but the fact that it has
become
a sacred, unbreakable law, and he exposes the will to power, the
cruelty and the domination behind moral ideas. Morality is based
on the desecration, the breaking down of the individual will.
The
individual must conform to prevailing moral codes; otherwise, he
becomes alienated from his essence. For Stirner, moral coercion
is
just as vicious as the coercion carried out by the state, only
it
is more insidious and subtle, since it does not require the use
of
physical force. The warden of morality is already installed in
the
individual's conscience. This internalized moral surveillance is
also found in Foucault's discussion of Panopticism--in which he
argues, reversing the classical paradigm, that the soul becomes
the prison for the body (Foucault, Discipline 195-228).

11. A similar critique may be leveled at rationality. Rational
truths
are always held above individual perspectives, and Stirner
argues
that this is merely another way of dominating the individual. As
with morality, Stirner is not necessarily against rational truth
itself, but rather against the way it has become sacred,
transcendental, and removed from the grasp of the individual,
thus
abrogating the individual's power. Stirner says: "As long as you
believe in the truth, you do not believe in yourself, and you
are
a --servant, a--religious man" (312). Rational truth, for
Stirner,
has no real meaning beyond individual perspectives--it is
something that can be used by the individual. Its real basis, as
with morality, is power.

12. So while, for Kant, moral maxims are rationally and freely
obeyed,
for Stirner they are a coercive standard, based on an alienating
notion of human "essence" that is forced upon the individual.
Moreover, they become the basis for practices of punishment and
domination. For instance, in response to the Enlightenment idea
that crime was a disease to be cured rather than a moral failing
to be punished, Stirner argues that curative and punitive
strategies were just two sides of the same old moral prejudice.
Both strategies rely on a universal norm which must be adhered
to:
"'curative means' always announces to begin with that
individuals
will be looked on as 'called' to a particular 'salvation' and
hence treated according to the requirements of this 'human
calling'" (213). Is not the individual, for Kant, also "called"
to
a particular "salvation" when he is required to do his duty and
obey moral codes? Is not the Kantian categorical imperative also
a
"human calling" in this sense? In other words, Stirner's
critique
of morality and rationality may be applied to Kant's categorical
imperative. For Stirner, although moral maxims may be ostensibly
freely followed, they still entail a hidden coercion and
authoritarianism. This is because they have become universalized
in the Kantian formulation as absolute norms which leave little
room for individual autonomy, and which one cannot transgress,
because to do so would be to go against one's own rational,
universal "human calling."

13. Stirner's critique of morality and its relation to punishment
has
striking similarities with Foucault's own writings on
punishment.
For Stirner, as we have seen, there is no difference between
cure
and punishment--the practice of curing is a reapplication of the
old moral prejudices in a new "enlightened" guise:

Curative means or healing is only the reverse side of
punishment, the theory of cure runs parallel with the theory
of punishment; if the latter sees in an action a sin against
right, the former takes it for a sin of the man against
himself, as a falling away from his health. (213)

14. This is very similar to Foucault's argument about the modern
formula of punishment--that medical and psychiatric norms are
only
the old morality in a new guise. While Stirner considers the
effect of such forms of moral hygiene on the individual
conscience, where Foucault's focus is more on the materiality of
the body, the formula of cure and punishment is the same: it is
the notion of what is properly "human" that authorizes a whole
series of exclusions, disciplinary practices, and restrictive
moral and rational norms. For Foucault, as well as for Stirner,
punishment is made possible by making something sacred or
absolute--in the way that Kant makes morality into a universal
law. There are several points to be made here. Firstly, both
Stirner and Foucault see moral and rational discourses as
problematic--they often exclude, marginalize, and oppress those
who do not live up to the norms implicit in these discourses.
Secondly, both thinkers see rationality and morality as being
implicated in power relations, rather than constituting a
critical
epistemological point outside power. Not only are these norms
made
possible by practices of power, through the exclusion and
domination of the other, but they also, in turn, justify and
perpetuate practices of power, such as those found in the prison
and asylum.

15. Thirdly, both thinkers see morality as having an ambiguous
relation to freedom. While Stirner argues that on the surface
moral and rational norms are freely adhered to, they
nevertheless
entail an oppression over ourselves--a self-domination--that is
far more insidious and effective than straightforward coercion.
In
other words, by conforming to universally prevailing moral and
rational norms, the individual abdicates his own power and
allows
himself to be dominated. Foucault also unmasks this hidden
domination of the moral and rational norm that is found behind
the
calm visage of human freedom. The classical Enlightenment idea
of
freedom, Foucault argues, allowed only pseudo-sovereignty. It
claims to hold sovereign "consciousness (sovereign in the
context
of judgment, but subjected to the necessities of truth), the
individual (a titular control of personal rights subjected to
the
laws of nature and society), basic freedom (sovereign within,
but
accepting the demands of an outside world and 'aligned with
destiny')" (Foucault, "Revolutionary" 221). In other words,
Enlightenment humanism claims to free individuals from all sorts
of institutional oppressions while, at the same time, entailing
an
intensification of oppression over the self and denial of the
power to resist this subjection. This subordination at the heart
of freedom may be seen in the Kantian categorical imperative:
while it is based on a freedom of consciousness, this freedom is
nevertheless subject to absolute rational and moral categories.
Classical freedom only liberates a certain form of subjectivity,
while intensifying domination over the individual who is
subordinated by these moral and rational criteria. That is to
say
that the discourse of freedom is based on a specific form of
subjectivity--the autonomous, rational man of the Enlightenment
and liberalism. As Foucault and Stirner show, this form of
freedom
is only made possible through the domination and exclusion of
other modes of subjectivity that do not conform to this rational
model. In other words, while morality does not deny or constrain
freedom in an overt way--in Kant's case moral maxims are based
on
the individual's freedom of choice--this freedom is nevertheless
restricted in a more subtle fashion because it is required to
conform to moral and rational absolutes.

16. It is clear, then, that for both Stirner and Foucault, the
classical Kantian idea of freedom is deeply problematic. It
constructs the individual as "rational" and "free" while
subjecting him to absolute moral and rational norms, and
dividing
him into rational and irrational, moral and immoral selves. The
individual freely conforms to these rational norms, and in this
way his subjectivity is constructed as a site of its own
oppression. The silent tyranny of the self-imposed norm has
become
the prevailing mode of subjection. While for Kant, moral maxims
and rational norms existed in a complementary relationship with
freedom, for Stirner and Foucault the relationship is much more
paradoxical and conflicting. It is not that transcendental moral
and rational norms deny freedom per se--indeed in the Kantian
paradigm they presuppose freedom. It is rather that the form of
freedom brought into being through these absolute categories
implies other, more subtle forms of domination. This domination
is
made possible precisely because freedom's relationship with
power
is masked. For Kant, as we have seen, freedom is an absence from
coercion. However, for Stirner and Foucault, freedom is always
implicated in power relations--power relations that are creative
as well as restrictive. To ignore this, moreover, to perpetuate
the comforting illusion that freedom promises a universal
liberation from power, is to play right into the hands of
domination. It may be argued, then, that Foucault and Stirner
uncover, in different ways, the authoritarian underside or the
"other scene" of Kantian freedom.


Foucauldian Freedom: The Care of the Self

17. This does not mean, however, that Stirner and Foucault reject
the
idea of freedom. On the contrary, they interrogate the limits of
the Enlightenment project of freedom in order to expand it--to
invent new forms of freedom and autonomy that go beyond the
restrictions of the categorical imperative. Indeed, as Olivia
Custer shows, Foucault is as engaged as Kant in the problematic
of
freedom. However, as we shall see, he seeks to approach the
question of freedom in a different way--through concrete ethical
strategies and practices of the self.

18. For Foucault, the illusion of a state of freedom beyond the
world
of power must be dispelled. Moreover, freedom's attachment to
essentialist categories and pre-ordained moral and rational
coordinates must at least be questioned. However, the concept of
freedom is very important for Foucault--he does not want to
dispense with it, but rather to situate it in a realm of power
relations that necessarily make it indeterminate. It is only
through a rethinking of freedom in this way that it can be
wrested
from the metaphysical world and brought to the level of the
individual. Rather than the abstract Kantian notion of freedom
as
a rational choice beyond constraints and limitations, freedom
for
Foucault exists in mutual and reciprocal relations with power.
Moreover, rather than freedom being presupposed by absolute
moral
maxims, it is actually presupposed by power. According to
Foucault, power may be understood as a series of "actions upon
the
action of others" in which multiple discourses,
counterdiscourses,
strategies, and technologies clash with one another--specific
relations of power always provoking specific and localized
relations of resistance. Resistance is something that exceeds
power and is at the same time integral to its dynamic. Power is
based on a certain freedom of action, a certain choice of
possibilities. In this sense, "power is exercised only over free
subjects, and only insofar as they are free" (Foucault,
"Subject"
208-26). Unlike classical schema in which power and freedom were
diagrammatically opposed, Foucauldian thinking asserts the total
dependency of the former on the latter. Where there is no
freedom,
where the field of action is absolutely restricted and
determined,
according to Foucault, there can be no power: slavery, for
instance, is not a power relationship (Foucault, "Subject" 221).

19. Foucault's notion of freedom is a radical departure from Kant's.
Whereas, for Kant, freedom is abstracted from the constraints
and
limitations of power, for Foucault, freedom is the very basis of
these limits and constraints. Freedom is not a metaphysical and
transcendental concept. Rather, it is entirely of this world and
exists in a complicated and entangled relationship with power.
Indeed, there can be no possibility of a world free from power
relations, as power and freedom cannot exist without one
another.

20. Moreover, Foucault is able to see freedom as being implicated in
power relations because, for him, freedom is more than just the
absence or negation of constraint. He rejects the "repressive"
model of freedom which presupposes an essential self--a
universal
human nature--that is restricted and needs to be liberated. The
liberation of an essential subjectivity is the basis of
classical
Enlightenment notions of freedom and is still central to our
political imaginary. However, both Foucault and Stirner reject
this idea of an essential self--this is merely an illusion
created
by power. As Foucault says, "The man described for us, whom we
are
invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a
subjection
much more profound than himself" (Discipline 30). While he does
not discount acts of political liberation--for example when a
people tries to liberate itself from colonial rule--this cannot
operate as the basis for an ongoing mode of freedom. To suppose
that freedom can be established eternally on the basis of this
initial act of liberation is only to invite new forms of
domination. If freedom is to be an enduring feature of any
political society it must be seen as a practice--an ongoing
strategy and mode of action that continuously challenges and
questions relations of power.

21. This practice of freedom is also a creative practice--a
continuous
process of self-formation of the subject. It is in this sense
that
freedom may be seen as positive. One of the features that
characterizes modernity, according to Foucault, is a
Baudelairean
"heroic" attitude toward the present. For Baudelaire, the
contingent, fleeting nature of modernity is to be confronted
with
a certain "attitude" toward the present that is concomitant with
a
new mode of relationship that one has with oneself. This
involves
a reinvention of the self: "This modernity does not 'liberate
man
in his own being'; it compels him to face the task of producing
himself" (Foucault, "What" 42). So, rather than freedom being a
liberation of man's essential self from external constraints, it
is an active and deliberate practice of inventing oneself. This
practice of freedom may be found in the example of the dandy, or
flneur, "who makes of his body, his behavior, his feelings and
passions, his very existence, a work of art" (Foucault, "What"
41-2). It is this practice of self-aestheticization that allows
us, according to Foucault, to reflect critically on the limits
of
our time. It does not seek a metaphysical place beyond all
limits,
but rather works within the limits and constraints of the
present.
More importantly, however, it is also a work conducted upon the
limits of ourselves and our own identities. Because power
operates
through a process of subjectification--by tying the individual
to
an essential identity--the radical reconstitution of the self is
a
necessary act of resistance. This idea of freedom, then, defines
a
new form of politics more relevant to contemporary regimes of
power: "The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of
our days is not to liberate the individual from the State and
its
institutions, but to liberate ourselves from the State and the
type of individualisation linked to it" (Foucault, "Subject"
216).

22. For Foucault, moreover, the liberation of the self is a
distinctly
ethical practice. It involves a notion of "care for the self"
whereby one's desires and behavior are regulated by oneself so
that freedom may be practiced ethically. This sensitivity to the
care for oneself and the ethical practice of freedom could be
found, Foucault suggests, among the Greeks and Romans of
antiquity. For them the freedom of the individual was an ethical
problem. Because the desire for power over others was also a
threat to one's own freedom, the exercise of power was something
that had to be regulated, monitored, and limited. To be a slave
to
one's own desires was as bad as being subject to another's
desires. This regulation of one's desires and practices required
an ethics of behavior that one constructed for oneself. In order
to practice freedom ethically, in order to be truly free, one
had
to achieve power over oneself, over one's desires. As Foucault
shows, in ancient Greek and Roman thinking, "the good ruler is
precisely the one who exercises his power correctly, i.e., by
exercising at the same time his power on himself" ("Ethics"
288).

23. This ethical practice of freedom associated with the care for
the
self begins, however, at a certain point to sound somewhat
Kantian. Indeed, as Foucault says, "for what is ethics, if not
the
practice of freedom? [...]. Freedom is the ontological condition
of ethics" ("Ethics" 284). Does this not appear to re-invoke the
categorical imperative where, for Kant, morality presupposes and
is founded on freedom? Has Foucault, in his attempt to escape
the
absolutism of morality and rationality, reintroduced the
categorical imperative in this careful regulation of behavior
and
desire? There can be no doubt about the stringency of this form
of
ethics. In The Use of Pleasure and The Care of the Self,
Foucault
describes the Greeks' and Romans' prescriptions concerning
everything from diet and exercise to sex. However, I would
suggest
that there is an important difference between the ethics of care
and the universal moral maxims insisted on by Kant. The
regulation
of behavior and the problematization of freedom central to the
ethic of care are things that one applies to oneself, rather
than
being imposed externally from a universal point beyond the
individual. Foucault's practice of freedom is, in this sense, an
ethics, rather than a morality. It is a certain consistency of
modes and behaviors that has as its object the consideration and
problematization of the self. In other words, it allows the self
to be seen as an open project to be constituted through the
ethical practices of the individual, rather than as something
defined a priori by universal, transcendental laws. Moral laws
do
not apply here--there is no transcendental authority or
universal
imperative that sanctions these ethical practices and penalizes
infractions. According to Foucault, morality is defined by the
type of subjectification it entails. On the one hand, there is
the
morality that enforces the code, through injunctions, and which
entails a form of subjectivity that refers the individual's
conduct to these laws, submitting it to their universal
authority.
This, it could be argued, is the morality of Kant's categorical
imperative. On the other hand, argues Foucault, there is the
morality in which

the accent was placed on the relationship of the self that
enabled the person to keep from being carried away by the
appetites and pleasures, to maintain a mastery and
superiority
over them, to keep his senses in a state of tranquility, to
remain free from interior bondage to the passions, and to
achieve a mode of being that could be defined by the full
enjoyment of oneself, or the perfect supremacy of oneself
over
oneself. (Use 29-30)

24. We can see, then, that Foucault's notion of freedom as an
ethical
practice is radically different from Kant's idea of freedom as
the
basis of universal moral law. For Foucault, freedom is ethical
because it implies an open-ended project that is conducted upon
oneself, the aim of which is to increase the power that one
exercises over oneself and to limit and regulate the power one
exercises over others. In this way, one's personal freedom and
autonomy are enhanced. For Kant, on the other hand, freedom is
the
basis of a metaphysical morality that must be universally
obeyed.
For Foucault, in other words, ethics intensifies freedom and
autonomy, whereas for Kant, freedom and autonomy are ultimately
circumscribed by the very morality they make possible.

25. So, there are two related aspects of Foucault's concept of
freedom
that must be emphasized here. Firstly, there is the practice of
freedom that allows one to liberate oneself, not from external
limits that repress one's essence, but rather from the limits
imposed by this very essence. It involves, in a sense, the
transgression of these limits through a transgression and
reinvention of oneself. It is a form of freedom which operates
within the limits of power, enabling the individual to make use
of
the limits in inventing him/herself. Secondly, there is the
aspect
of freedom that is distinctly ethical--it is a practice of care
for the self that has as its aim an increase of the power over
oneself and one's desires, thus keeping in check one's exercise
of
power over others. In this way, the practice of care for the
self
allows the individual to navigate an ethical course of action
amidst power relations, with the aim of intensifying freedom and
personal autonomy. Therefore, freedom is conceived as an ongoing
and contingent practice of the self that is not determined in
advance by fixed moral and rational laws.


The Two Enlightenments

26. In his later essay "What Is Enlightenment?," Foucault considers
Kant's insistence on the free and public use of autonomous
reason
as an escape, a "way out" for man from a state of immaturity and
subordination. While Foucault believes that this autonomous
reason
is useful because it allows a critical ethos toward modernity,
he
refuses the "blackmail" of the Enlightenment--the insistence
that
this critical ethos at the heart of the Enlightenment be
inscribed
in a universal rationality and morality. The problem with Kant
is
that he opens up a space for individual autonomy and critical
reflection on the limits of oneself, only to close this space
down
by re-inscribing it in transcendental notions of rationality and
morality that require absolute obedience. For Foucault, the
legacy
of the Enlightenment is deeply ambiguous. As Colin Gordon shows,
for Foucault there are two Enlightenments--the Enlightenment of
rational certainty, absolute identity, and destiny, and the
Enlightenment of continual questioning and uncertainty.
According
to Foucault, this ambiguity is reflected in Kant's own treatment
of the Enlightenment.

27. There is perhaps a Kantian moment in Foucault (or could we say a
Foucauldian moment in Kant?). Foucault shows how one might read
Kant in a heterogeneous way, focusing on the more libratory
aspect
of his thinking--where we are encouraged to interrogate the
limits
of modernity, to reflect critically on the way we have been
constituted as subjects. As Foucault shows, Kant sees the
Enlightenment (Aufklrung) as a critical condition,
characterized
by an "audacity to know" and the free and autonomous public use
of
reason. This critical condition is concomitant with a "will to
revolution"--with the attempt to understand revolution (in
Kant's
case the French Revolution) as an Event that allows an
interrogation of the conditions of modernity--"an ontology of
the
present"--and the way we as subjects stand in relation to it
(Foucault, "Kant" 88-96). Foucault suggests that we may adopt
this
critical strategy to reflect upon the limits of the discourse of
the Enlightenment itself and its universal rational and moral
injunctions. We may in this sense use the critical capacities of
the Enlightenment against itself, thus opening up spaces for
individual autonomy within its edifice, beyond the grasp of
universal laws.

28. This critical stance toward the present, and the practice of the
"care for the self" with which it is bound up, outline a
genealogical strategy of freedom--a strategy that, as Foucault
says "is not seeking to make possible a metaphysics that has
finally become a science; it is seeking to give new impetus
[...]
to the undefined work of freedom" ("What" 46).


Stirner's Theory of Ownness

29. As we shall see, it is precisely this desire to give new impetus
to freedom, to take it out of the realm of empty dreams and
promises, that is reflected in Stirner's theory of ownness. He
adopts a "genealogical" approach similar to Foucault's in making
the focus of freedom the self and situating freedom amidst
relations of power.

30. The idea of transgressing and reinventing the self--of freeing
the
self from fixed and essential identities--is also a central
theme
in Stirner's thinking. As we have seen, Stirner shows that the
notion of human essence is an oppressive fiction derived from an
inverted Christian idealism that tyrannizes the individual and
is
linked with various forms of political domination. Stirner
describes a process of subjectification which is very similar to
Foucault's: rather than power operating as downward repression,
it
rules through the subjectification of the individual, by
defining
him according to an essential identity. As Stirner says: "the
State betrays its enmity to me by demanding that I be a man . .
.
it imposes being a man upon me as a duty" (161). Human essence
imposes a series of fixed moral and rational ideas on the
individual, which are not of his creation and which curtail his
autonomy. It is precisely this notion of duty, of moral
obligation--the same sense of duty that is the basis of the
categorical imperative--that Stirner finds oppressive.

31. For Stirner, then, the individual must free him- or herself from
these oppressive ideas and obligations by first freeing himself
from essence--from the essential identity that is imposed on
him.
Freedom involves, then, a transgression of essence, a
transgression of the self. But what form should this
transgression
take? Like Foucault, Stirner is suspicious of the language of
liberation and revolution--it is based on a notion of an
essential
self that supposedly throws off the chains of external
repression.
For Stirner, it is precisely this notion of human essence that
is
itself oppressive. Therefore, different strategies of freedom
are
called for--ones that abandon the humanist project of liberation
and seek, rather, to reconfigure the subject in new and
non-essentialist ways. To this end, Stirner calls for an
insurrection:

Revolution and insurrection must not be looked upon as
synonymous. The former consists in an overturning of
conditions, of the established condition or status, the
state
or society, and is accordingly a political or social act;
the
latter has indeed for its unavoidable consequence a
transformation of circumstances, yet does not start from it
but from men's discontent with themselves, is not an armed
rising but a rising of individuals, a getting up without
regard to the arrangements that spring from it. The
revolution
aimed at new arrangements; insurrection leads us no longer
to
let ourselves be arranged, but to arrange ourselves, and
sets
no glittering hopes on "institutions." It is not a fight
against the established, since, if it prospers, the
established collapses of itself; it is only a working forth
of
me out of the established. (279-80)

32. So while a revolution aims at transforming existing social and
political conditions so that human essence may flourish, an
insurrection aims at freeing the individual from this very
essence. Like Foucault's practices of freedom, the insurrection
aims at transforming the relationship that the individual has
with
himself. The insurrection starts, then, with the individual
refusing his or her enforced essential identity: it starts, as
Stirner says, from men's discontent with themselves.
Insurrection
does not aim at overthrowing political institutions. It is aimed
at the individual, in a sense transgressing his own identity--
the
outcome of which is, nevertheless, a change in political
arrangements. Insurrection is therefore not about becoming what
one is--becoming human, becoming man--but about becoming what
one
is not.

33. This ethos of escaping essential identities through a
reinvention
of oneself has many important parallels with the Baudelarian
aestheticization of the self that interests Foucault. Like
Baudelaire's assertion that the self must be treated as a work
of
art, Stirner sees the self--or the ego--as a "creative
nothingness," a radical emptiness which is up to the individual
to
define: "I do not presuppose myself, because I am every moment
just positing or creating myself" (135). The self, for Stirner,
is
a process, a continuous flow of self-creating flux--it is a
process that eludes the imposition of fixed identities and
essences: "no concept expresses me, nothing that is designated
as
my essence exhausts me" (324).

34. Therefore, Stirner's strategy of insurrection and Foucault's
project of care for the self are both contingent practices of
freedom that involve a reconfiguration of the subject and its
relationship with the self. For Stirner, as with Foucault,
freedom
is an undefined and open-ended project in which the individual
engages. The insurrection, as Stirner argues, does not rely on
political institutions to grant freedom to the individual, but
looks to the individual to invent his or her own forms of
freedom.
It is an attempt to construct spaces of autonomy within
relations
of power, by limiting the power that is exercised over the
individual by others and increasing the power that the
individual
exercises over himself. The individual, moreover, is free to
reinvent himself in new and unpredictable ways, escaping the
limits imposed by human essence and universal notions of
morality.

35. The notion of insurrection involves a reformulation of the
concept
of freedom in ways that are radically post-Kantian. Stirner
suggests, for instance, that there can be no truly universal
idea
of freedom; freedom is always a particular freedom in the guise
of
the universal. The universal freedom that, for Kant, is the
domain
of all rational individuals, would only mask some hidden
particular interest. Freedom, according to Stirner, is an
ambiguous and problematic concept, an "enchantingly beautiful
dream" that seduces the individual yet remains unattainable, and
from which the individual must awaken.

36. Furthermore, freedom is a limited concept. It is only seen in
its
narrow negative sense. Stirner wants, rather, to extend the
concept to a more positive freedom to. Freedom in the negative
sense involves only self-abnegation--to be rid of something, to
deny oneself. That is why, according to Stirner, the freer the
individual ostensibly becomes, in accordance with the
emancipative
ideals of Enlightenment humanism, the more he loses the power he
exercises over himself. On the other hand, positive freedom--or
ownness--is a form of freedom that is invented by the individual
for him or herself. Unlike Kantian freedom, ownness is not
guaranteed by universal ideals or categorical imperatives. If it
were, it could only lead to further domination: "The man who is
set free is nothing but a freed man [...] he is an unfree man in
the garment of freedom, like the ass in the lion's skin" (152).

37. Freedom must, rather, be seized by the individual. For freedom
to
have any value it must be based on the power of the individual
to
create it. "My freedom becomes complete only when it is my--
might;
but by this I cease to be a merely free man, and become and own
man" (151). Stirner was one of the first to recognize that the
true basis of freedom is power. To see freedom as a universal
absence of power is to mask its very basis in power. The theory
of
ownness is a recognition, and indeed an affirmation, of the
inevitable relation between freedom and power. Ownness is the
realization of the individual's power over himself--the ability
to
create his or her own forms of freedom, which are not
circumscribed by metaphysical or essentialist categories. In
this
sense, ownness is a form of freedom that goes beyond the
categorical imperative. It is based on a notion of the self as a
contingent and open field of possibilities, rather than on an
absolute and dutiful adherence to external moral maxims.


Conclusion

38. This idea of ownness is crucial in formulating a post-Kantian
concept of freedom. Perhaps, in Stirner's words, "Ownness
created
a new freedom" (147). Firstly, ownness allows freedom to be
considered beyond the limits of universal moral and rational
categories. Ownness is the form of freedom that one invents for
oneself, rather than one that is guaranteed by transcendental
ideals. Foucault, too, sought to "free" freedom from these
oppressive limits. Secondly, ownness converges closely with
Foucault's own argument about freedom being situated in power
relations. Like Foucault, Stirner shows that the idea of freedom
as entailing a complete absence of power and constraint is
illusory. The individual is always involved in a complex network
of power relations, and freedom must be fought for, reinvented,
and renegotiated within these limits. Ownness may be seen, then,
as creating the possibilities of resistance to power. Similarly
to
Foucault, Stirner maintains that freedom and resistance can
always
exist, even in the most oppressive conditions. In this sense,
ownness is a project of freedom and resistance within power's
limits--it is the recognition of the fundamentally antagonistic
and ambiguous nature of freedom. Thirdly, not only is ownness an
attempt to limit the domination of the individual, but it is
also
a way of intensifying the power that one exercises over oneself.
We have seen that for both Stirner and Foucault, Kant's
universal
freedom is based on absolute moral and rational norms that limit
individual sovereignty. Foucault and Stirner are both
interested,
in different ways, in reformulating the concept of freedom:
through the ethical practice of care of the self and through the
strategy of ownness, both of which are aimed at increasing the
power that the individual has over himself.

39. These two strategies allow us to conceptualize freedom in a more
contemporary way. Freedom can no longer be seen as a universal
emancipation, the eternal promise of a world beyond the limits
of
power. The freedom that forms the basis of the categorical
imperative, the freedom exalted by Kant as the province of
reason
and morality, can no longer serve as the basis for contemporary
ideas of freedom. It has been also shown by Stirner and Foucault
to exclude and oppress where it includes, to enslave where it
also
liberates. Freedom must be seen as no longer being subservient
to
absolute maxims of morality and rationality, to imperatives that
invoke the dull, cold inevitability of law and punishment. For
Stirner and Foucault, freedom must be "freed" from these
absolute
notions. Rather than a privilege that is granted from a
metaphysical point to the individual, freedom must be seen as a
practice, a critical ethos of the self, and as a struggle that
is
engaged in by the individual within the problematic of power. It
necessarily involves a reflection on the limits of the self and
the ontological conditions of the present--a constant
reinvention
and problematization of subjectivity. A post-Kantian freedom, in
this way, is not only a recognition of power, but also a
reflection upon power's limits--an affirmation of the
possibilities of individual autonomy within power and of the
critical capacities of modern subjectivity.

Department of Political Science
University of Western Australia
snewman@cyllene.uwa.edu.au <mailto:snewman@cyllene.uwa.edu.au>

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Notes

1 <#ref1>. See Koch.

2 <#ref2>. This rejection of the anthropological foundations of
freedom is also discussed by Rajchman. Indeed Rajchman sees
Foucault's project of freedom as an ethical attitude of
continual
questioning of the borders and limits of our contemporary
experience--a freedom of philosophy as well as a philosophy of
freedom. My discussion of Foucault's reconfiguration of the
problematic of freedom in terms of concrete ethical strategies
of
the self may also be seen in this context.

3 <#ref3>. See Lacan. In this essay, Lacan shows that the Law
produces its own transgression, and that it can only operate
through this transgression. The excess of Sade does not
contradict
the injunctions, laws, and categorical imperatives of Kant;
rather, they are inextricably linked to it. Like Foucault's
discussion of the "spirals" of power and pleasure, in which
power
produces the very pleasure it is seen to repress, Lacan suggests
that the denial of enjoyment--embodied in Law, in the
categorical
imperative--produces its own form of perverse enjoyment, or
jouissance as a surplus--le plus de jouir. Sade, according to
Lacan, exposes this obscene enjoyment by reversing the paradigm:
he turns this perverse pleasure into a law itself, into a sort
of
Kantian categorical imperative or universal principle: "Let us
enunciate the maxim: 'I have the right of enjoyment over your
body, anyone can say to me, and I will exercise this right,
without any limit stopping me in the capriciousness of the
exactions that I might have the taste to satiate'" (58). In this
way the obscene pleasure of the Law that is unmasked in Kant is
reversed into the Law of obscene pleasure through Sade. As Zizek
remarks in "Kant with (or against) Sade," the crucial insight of
Lacan's argument here is not that Kant is a closet sadist, but
rather that Sade is a "closet Kantian." That is, Sadean excess
is
taken to such an extreme that it becomes emptied of pleasure and
takes the form of a cold-blooded, joyless universal Law.


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